Archive for the ‘Jonathan Ross’ Category

LONDON, England (CNN) — The BBC’s highest paid celebrity has lost more than $2 million after being suspended without pay for a series of abusive telephone calls made by himself and another of the broadcaster’s stars.

Ross, who the UK’s Press Association reports has a £6 million ($9.7 million) contract with the broadcaster, was suspended from all broadcasting for 12 weeks Thursday after the BBC Trust, the sovereign body of the organization, met to discuss the calls.

“He (Ross) will not be paid by the BBC during this period. The fees that would have been paid will be deducted from his BBC contract,” Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC, said in a statement.

The suspension will cost Ross £1.5 million ($2.43 million). He is now believed to be in Wales with his brother Paul, a fellow broadcaster.

Thompson added: “Jonathan Ross’s contribution to this edition of the Russell Brand show was utterly unacceptable and cannot be allowed to go uncensored or without sanction.”

Earlier Thursday, Lesley Douglas, Controller of BBC Radio 2, 6 Music and Popular Music, stood down from her role and offered a “personal apology to Sachs and his family and to the audience for what has happened,” the BBC said.

The prank calls row has also claimed the scalp of Brand, who resigned Wednesday.

Ross and Brand rang Sachs — who played a Spanish waiter in John Cleese’s 1970s TV comedy “Fawlty Towers” — but when it dawned on them that he was not around, they left a series of messages on the veteran actor’s phone, joking about Brand’s sexual relationship with Sachs’ granddaughter Georgina Baillie, 23.

LONDON, Oct. 29 — Junior high-school boys everywhere, listen up: One highly paid BBC personality was forced to quit and another was suspended Wednesday for making a prank phone call using dirty words.

The two radio and TV stars, Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand, have been subjected to a public flogging all week on TV news and radio talk shows and on the front pages of British newspapers.

Above: British radio and TV personality Russell Brand resigned yesterday after he and colleague Jonathan Ross made an obscene phone call to actor Andrew Sachs that was later aired on Brand’s BBC radio program. (By Matt Cardy — Getty Images)

The Sun tabloid dismissed Brand and Ross as “sickos.” Prime Minister Gordon Brown took a few minutes away from meetings in Paris on the global financial crisis to reprimand their “inappropriate and unacceptable behavior.”

Brand, who recently starred in the Hollywood film “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and hosted this year’s MTV Video Music Awards, resigned from his BBC radio program late Wednesday after more than 27,000 people complained.

Ross, who earns almost $10 million a year as a radio and TV host, was suspended and apologized for his “juvenile and thoughtless remarks.” He will remain off the airwaves until top BBC bosses meet later this week. BBC chief Mark Thompson cut short a vacation to return to London to deal with the fallout.

Ofcom, Britain’s broadcasting regulator, is also investigating, and politicians across the spectrum have condemned Brand, Ross and the BBC.

The problems started Oct. 18, when BBC radio aired a show of Brand’s on which Ross and Brand made a phone call to Andrew Sachs, a 78-year-old actor famous for his role on the British TV comedy classic “Fawlty Towers.”

Brand, 33, had once had a romantic fling with Sachs’s granddaughter. On the prank call, he and Ross left a message on Sachs’s answering machine describing graphically what Brand had gotten up to with the young woman. After they hung up, the two said on air that they might have to make it up to Sachs by breaking into his house and performing a sex act on him.